Banjo-Tooie

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By IGN Staff

E3 2000 Lite Impressions: Character Swapping

Banjo-Tooie is shaping up to be quite a sequel and we jumped at the chance to gather some new details on a sure fire Rare hit. First, however, we'll tell you what we didn't find out. Nintendo of America's Ken Lobb refused to comment when asked directly about how Banjo-Tooie and Banjo-Kazooie will interact. Hot swapping cartridges seems to be the conventional wisdom but even when confronted with this assumption Mr. Lobb reaffirmed his commitment not to tell us just how the two games will work together.

We did learn a little about how characters will be used in the game. You'll have all of the moves from the last game as long as the bird and bear are one unit. However separating Banjo from Kazooie is a huge part of this sequel. You will first have to learn how and when to do this. There will be pads and areas throughout the game where changing characters can occur.

When you first separate say into Banjo, he'll have his own set of limited moves. He'll have to learn more moves if he wants to progress through the game. In a short clip of the game that we've seen, many of Banjo's new moves seem to stem from the fact that he no longer has a bird in his backpack to worry about. We saw him sling it around aggressively as a weapon. Scoop up objects and enemies and use it to capture air so that he can go underwater, for example. Kazooie follows a similar pattern. Now that she's free from Banjo's backpack she can fly a lot easier and make use of her bird instincts. In one scene she was observed sitting on an egg until it hatched and some kind of icon was made available to her.

Perhaps the most interesting part about swapping was when we got a demo of how Mumbo will be usable in the game. Banjo-Kazooie entered Mumbo's chamber where he asked them for a particular magic energy item. If you have it, he'll help you immediately. If you don't well then you'd better start looking for it. He offers his assistance, by way of a cut scene, and tells you that you are now in control of him and that if you want to regain control of Banjo-Kazooie you simply have to return, as Mumbo, to the throne in his chamber. Of course playing as Mumbo gives you some very cool special abilities. We saw Mumbo go to a Mumbo Magic Pad where he was able to cast a spell. He made the sun shine on a large body of water, thereby "oxygenating" it so that the water is now breathable. So now you can hustle back to Mumbo's throne get control of the bear and bird and proceed to explore that underwater area without fear of running out of air. This is supposedly and example of how the character swapping will help you through the game. In this case, you will be able to explore deeper and more remote parts of the underwater area without having to come up for air every few seconds.

This is yet another lite hands-on impressions and a scratch of the surface of what we're going to bring you from the show floor in the coming days.

Preview Only days after the release of Rare's Banjo-Kazooie, Nintendo 64 owners across the US were already asking the question: what is Banjo-Tooie -- the mystery that Mumbo speaks of at the end of Rare's 3D platformer starring a bear/bird duo?

Rare answered promptly (probably under an onslaught of letters from curious gamers): "Banjo-Tooie will be the official sequel to Banjo-Kazooie -- a totally new game we'll release in 1999."

While 1999 came and went with no Tooie for tots, it should still be one of the most anxiously awaited N64 titles of 2000 and so the time has come to start getting excited about this sequel. Many N64 fans believe that the Banjo Kazooie is still the best pure 3D adventure/platform game on the system, surpassing even Donkey Kong 64 and Super Mario 64. While the "best ever" title can be debated, Rare is making sure that Banjo-Tooie will include a whole lot more of what made the original game a hit and some very interesting new features to keep the genre fresh.

Just in case you are worried about the inclusion of Kazooie, Banjo the Bear's sidekick -- don't be. according to Rare, Kazooie is in the game. "Tooie" is just a funny play on the words "two" and "Kazooie." Now that we have that clear...

A Mere Handful of Features That We Know About

Eight gigantic worlds

At least one mini-game per world.

A mixture of familiar and all new characters to interact with.

New boss characters to conquer.

Banjo and Kazooie can now be separated and controlled individually.

A variety of new team and individual moves for Banjo and Kazooie.

Mumbo Jumbo can be controlled at some point in the game.

Ground breaking four player game modes.

Improved graphics with real time lighting effects and polished textures.

Improved camera system

Of course the one feature that grabs IGN64's attention is the separate Banjo and Kazooie controllable characters. We're assuming that there will still be plenty of hybrid gameplay with everyone's favorite squawker popping out of everyone's favorite backpack, but being able to use the bear and bird individually opens up a lot of possibilities. How this will be done in the game, is the big question now. Will Banjo just stand there motionless and vulnerable while you're running around as Kazooie pecking or squawking at enemies? Will there be a DK64 type of switching where you have to access certain character swapping areas? While each of these options would make for some interesting gameplay challenges, Rare may just surprise all of us and come up with something new and better than we can imagine.

The variety of moves in BK was already impressive enough, but the potential for all of the new moves in B-Tooie is already causing a lot of excitement around the IGN offices. Running around doing the same jumping and buttstomping over and over again can really get boring and this has spelled doom for scores of platformers throughout history. The thought of all new moves for both the hybrid character and Banjo and Kazooie individually should have fans of Rare adventure games tingling with excitement.

No word yet on whether or not Tooie will use the Expansion Pak to achieve those fine new visual elements and other fresh features. DK64 put the 4MB Pak into a lot of N64 households, so it would be a safe bet to assume Rare would follow up on the groundwork it's laid and put the extra RAM to good use in Tooie.

Besides the new gameplay features, Banjo-Tooie will have another attraction that'll make this a must have for dedicated N64 owners. The ending of Banjo-Kazooie shows several areas in the game that remain locked, even after completion. Certain items and locations cannot be accessed. They are:

Wozza's Cave: The Ice Key

Treasure Trove Cove: Sharkfood Island

Gobi's Valley: Gobi's Door

Rare has already confirmed "...We've included some areas in Banjo-Kazooie that can't be accessed without first playing Banjo-Tooie. The secrets revealed at the end of the first game will only come into play during the second, so until then, you can look but you can't touch."

We're not sure how it will be done but, there's going to be some significant cross-over between the two Banjo games and it will be like nothing ever seen on the console. Banjo-Kazooie does not use memory paks for saving purposes, so we doubt that this will be an option for exchanging info between the two games. Initially, IGN64 came up with a handful of scenarios that would allow both games to interact with each other:

A special cartridge similar to Sega's Sonic and Knuckles that plugs in between the N64 and Banjo-Kazooie.

A simple code rewarded in the sequel is entered in the original to unlock hidden areas.

The add-on cartridge idea would be a complicated and cumbersome solution and parents may not want to drop $50+ for a semi-cartridge that'll be easy to break and difficult to use. A code or trick buried within Tooie that can be applied to Banjo Kazooie might be the most likely scenario. We take our hats off to Rare if they've kept a BK code secret for this long but if LucasArts can do it with Rogue Squadron then so can Nintendo's favorite second party developer.

Outlook Donkey Kong 64 has come and gone and frankly, it was under-whelming simply because it failed to live up to the standards set by Rare's previous 3D platformer Banjo-Kazooie. Tooie, designed by the same talented team that engineered the original, looks to blow by both Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 and never look back. Judging by the screenshots we've already previewed, there is no doubt that Tooie is one of Rare's prettiest efforts to date and with loads of options, huge worlds to explore and a multiplayer mode to boot, this game is going to be big when it finally hits this summer. Between Banjo, Kazooie and that bastard Conker, Nintendo 64 owners' platforming needs are more than covered.